By Dale Carter
VMware has just made life easier for VMware Horizon administrators. With the release of VMware Horizon 6.1, VMware has added a popular feature—from the Horizon 6 release—to the web interface. Using Cloud Pod Architecture you can now link a number of Horizon deployments together to create a larger global pool – and these pools can span two different locations.
Cloud Pod Architecture in Horizon 6 was sometimes difficult to configure because you had to use a command line interface on the connection brokers. Now, with Horizon 6.1, you can configure and manage Cloud Pod Architecture via the Web Admin Portal, and this greatly improves the Cloud Pod Architecture feature.
When you deploy Cloud Pod Architecture with Horizon 6.1 you can:
- Enable Horizon deployments across multiple data centers
- Replicate new data layers across Horizon connection servers
- Support a single namespace for end-users with a global URL
- Assign and manage desktops and users with the Global Entitlement layer
The significant benefits you gain include:
- The ability to scale Horizon deployments to multiple data centers with up to 10,000 sessions
- Horizon deployment support for active/active and disaster recovery use cases
- Support for geo-roaming users
This illustration shows how two Horizon deployments—one in Chicago and another in London—are linked together.
To configure Cloud Pod Architecture for supporting a global name space you first:
- Set up at least two Horizon Connection Servers – one at each site; each server would have desktop pools
- Test them to ensure they work properly, including assigning users (or test users) to the environments
Following this initial step you create global pools, then configure local pools with global pools, and finally set up user entitlements, which can be done from any Horizon Connection Server.
For more detailed information, and for a complete walk-through on setting up your Cloud Pod Architecture feature, read the white paper “Cloud Pod Architecture with VMware Horizon 6.1“.
Dale is a Senior Solutions Architect and member of the CTO Ambassadors. Dale focuses in the End User Compute space, where Dale has become a subject matter expert in a number of the VMware products. Dale has more than 20 years experience working in IT having started his career in Northern England before moving the Spain and finally the USA. Dale currently hold a number of certifications including VCP-DV, VCP-DT, VCAP-DTD and VCAP-DTA.
For updates you can follow Dale on twitter @vDelboy
